Wagiman is a near-extinct Aboriginal Australian language spoken in and around Pine Creek in the Katherine Region of Australia's Northern Territory. By 2021 only two elderly speakers remained, a brother and sister in their seventies, down from 30 recorded in the 2011 census and 18 in 2016, according to linguist Daniel Krausse's 2019 to 2021 fieldwork. Wagiman was once thought to belong to the Gunwinyguan family, but that classification has been rejected, and it is now treated as a language isolate within the broader, non-genetic Australian language grouping. The language is notable for a rare part of speech called the coverb and for deriving verbs from coverb roots, a feature otherwise unknown among Australian languages.
Facts
RegionPine Creek and surrounding Katherine Region, Northern Territory, Australia 1 Speaker Count Proto-Language StatusNo proto-language is reconstructed for Wagiman on its own. It is treated as a language isolate within the broader, still-hypothetical Australian language family grouping rather than as a member of any established lower-level family. 1 Sources
1. Wikipedia: Wagiman Language
Wikimedia FoundationInfobox, region field
Pine Creek, Northern Territory, Australia
Infobox, speakers field, 2021
Native speakers: 2 (2021)
Classification section
Wagiman is a language isolate within the hypothetical Australian language family.
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